Tuesday, May 14, 2013

Cairo: Islamist allies of President Mohammad Mursi have said they will launch a campaign to collect endorsements for him to stay in office, countering a drive by opponents demanding early presidential elections.

Leading Islamist Assem Abdul Majed suggested the pro-Mursi campaign this week, predicting that the new drive will gather signatures from Egyptians exceeding the 15 million endorsements sought by secularists to remove the president from office to clear the way for early elections.

Organisers of the anti-Mursi campaign known as “Rebel” said they had gathered more than two million in the first 10 days of the effort.

“Civilised people bring the president to account only at the end of his term in office,” Abdul Majed, a leading member of the militant Jamat Al Eslamiya (Islamic Group) said. “But Egypt is the only country where anyone disagreeing with the president or coveting his post usually calls for early presidential elections,” he added in a statement, unveiling his “Be Objective” campaign. He called on backers to donate money to finance the campaign.

The rival campaigns come against the background of a deep political crisis between Mursi, who is Egypt’s first democratically elected president, and the secular-minded opposition.

Mursi took office in June and has since been earning more critics who accuse him of failing to achieve the objectives of the revolution that brought him to power. His supporters, however, accuse the opposition of fomenting trouble in the country and seeking to topple Mursi.

“The so-called ‘Rebel’ campaign represents a coup against legitimacy,” said Khalid Saeed, a senior official in the Islamist Salafist Front, a Mursi ally.

“It is necessary for the president to complete his four-year term. Therefore, we vehemently support the call made by engineer Assem Abdul Majed. By doing this, we emphasise support for legitimacy, not for the person of the president,” he told Gulf News.

The Muslim Brotherhood, from which Mursi hails, has distanced itself from the proposed campaign, urging both the opposition and allies to display abidance by what the ruling group called “legal frameworks and constitutional legitimacy”.

The opposition claims that the Brotherhood seeks to tighten its grip on power and turn Egypt into a theocracy.

By Ramadan Al Sherbini Correspondent

Gulf News 2013. All rights reserved.